Heather Snell, University of Winnipeg
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Winnipeg, Manitoba
h.snell@uwinnipeg.ca
Office:
(204) 786-9185
Bio/Research
While my primary field of interest is postcolonial cultural studies, my fascination with postcolonial representations of children has increasingly led me toward research in young people’s texts and cultures. As evidenced by the popularity of the postcolonial Bildungsroman or novel of development,...
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Bio/Research
While my primary field of interest is postcolonial cultural studies, my fascination with postcolonial representations of children has increasingly led me toward research in young people’s texts and cultures. As evidenced by the popularity of the postcolonial Bildungsroman or novel of development, among other forms, representations of children, adolescents, teens, and youth generally are abundant in postcolonial literatures, films, and other media.
For a number of cultural producers who hail from former European colonies in regions such as South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, the figure of the child and childhood itself represent highly contested sites of discipline, control, and negotiation. Throughout the period of British colonialism, the Victorian notion of childhood as a "primitive" state of becoming was mapped onto Britain’s colonies, discursively transforming colonial subjects into "children of the empire." This particular construction of colonial subjects persists in official and popular representations of many postcolonial subjects, especially when they are situated in the so-called "developing world."
The very notion of development, as it is applied to certain postcolonies, suggests that postcolonial subjects have not yet come fully into being or advanced to a mature state. Africa is still overwhelmingly represented as just such a "backward" place, while nations such as India and cities such as Rio de Janeiro are almost always associated with abject poverty—the result, presumably, of their failure to successfully negotiate modernity. The prominence of images of children in advertisements for humanitarian aid and their ubiquity in discussions around "Third-World" poverty suggest not only that children are viewed as (and often are) the most vulnerable subjects in some postcolonies, but also that the adults who are supposed to take care of them tend to be perceived as inadequate.
The frequent association of certain postcolonies with the child or the child-like, moreover, further implies that adults in certain regions neither nurture nor respect Euro-American conceptions of childhood. Postcolonial constructions of the child interrogate and sometimes transform normative or oppressive notions of childhood in their attempts to reclaim the child and childhood as symbolic sites of resistance and transformation. They may also point to the possible limitations of using the child and the child’s point of view as political devices. My research and teaching straddle the fields of postcolonial cultural studies and research in young people’s texts and cultures to examine postcolonial representations of youth and local engagements withnotions of "the global child" and "global citizenship" in texts for and about young people.
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For a number of cultural producers who hail from former European colonies in regions such as South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, the figure of the child and childhood itself represent highly contested sites of discipline, control, and negotiation. Throughout the period of British colonialism, the Victorian notion of childhood as a "primitive" state of becoming was mapped onto Britain’s colonies, discursively transforming colonial subjects into "children of the empire." This particular construction of colonial subjects persists in official and popular representations of many postcolonial subjects, especially when they are situated in the so-called "developing world."
The very notion of development, as it is applied to certain postcolonies, suggests that postcolonial subjects have not yet come fully into being or advanced to a mature state. Africa is still overwhelmingly represented as just such a "backward" place, while nations such as India and cities such as Rio de Janeiro are almost always associated with abject poverty—the result, presumably, of their failure to successfully negotiate modernity. The prominence of images of children in advertisements for humanitarian aid and their ubiquity in discussions around "Third-World" poverty suggest not only that children are viewed as (and often are) the most vulnerable subjects in some postcolonies, but also that the adults who are supposed to take care of them tend to be perceived as inadequate.
The frequent association of certain postcolonies with the child or the child-like, moreover, further implies that adults in certain regions neither nurture nor respect Euro-American conceptions of childhood. Postcolonial constructions of the child interrogate and sometimes transform normative or oppressive notions of childhood in their attempts to reclaim the child and childhood as symbolic sites of resistance and transformation. They may also point to the possible limitations of using the child and the child’s point of view as political devices. My research and teaching straddle the fields of postcolonial cultural studies and research in young people’s texts and cultures to examine postcolonial representations of youth and local engagements withnotions of "the global child" and "global citizenship" in texts for and about young people.
Click to Shrink <<